It would be easy to say Pokémon fever was at an all time high in the year 2000, but in reality, the series has only had a few minor bumps in its roaring popularity over the past two decades.
It all started with two simple RPGs about catching monsters on the original Game Boy, but that simple formula ended up creating one of the biggest media properties of all time. From there the franchise spread far and wide with trading cards, toys, TV series, and basically anything else you can think of. Sequels to the games were the most obvious step forward, along with the major animated film Pokémon The Movie 2000. Generation 2 would hit North America in late 2000, but that wasn't the only craze the Pokémon franchise was looking to ride.
At the same time as Pokémon was sweeping the globe, a new type of online animation and game tool called Flash was allowing previously unseen levels of production online. People were able to make short animated films all on their own, or even their own games. They started out simple, but the community around Flash quickly grew into a massive amount of high quality content online.
Pokémon couldn't be as successful as it was without the internet, and the new opportunities it presented interested AOL Time Warner enough to contract Cyberworld International Corporation to develop a tie-in game to their feature film called Pokémon 2000 Adventure Game. It used the company's QBORG technology, an early way to display 3D graphics through a specialized web browser, to create 2.5D environments the game would be played on. However, the game was only available for about a month before being taken down. According to the technical director of the game, Neil Marshall, this was due to "a contract dispute."
The original game's page gave a very vague description of the game, but was likely more than enough to get kids excited to play a Pokémon game on their computer. "Choose a Pokémon team, score points, and enter a world filled with your favorite Pokémon! It's all in the Pokémon 2000 Adventure Game.
Professor Oak needs you to help save the world. Why? Because "you're a Pokémon Master in the making!"
The game would begin with the player entering their name, choosing a team of Pokémon, and a difficulty level. The objective of the game was to progress through three islands, each of which containing one of the three legendary bird Pokémon, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, to collect an "Ancient Sphere." Each island would have several levels with their own challenges to overcome, including other Pokémon to fight. There didn't seem to be any catching mechanics, though, with Pokéball items serving to either level up existing Pokémon, or Team Rocket stealing one Pokémon at random from the player's team. Once at the end of the island, the player would be asked Pokémon trivia questions in order to finally collect the Ancient Sphere. Unfortunately, no one seems to know what would happen if all three were collected.
Since the game was taken down, Warner Bros. has deleted the domain the game was hosted on, leaving only a couple files, images, sprites, and seven levels. The only reason that much remains is because, while the game was still active, playing levels would actually download them to the player's computer. As long as they kept the data, and the browser needed to run the game, it could be recovered. Even Neil Marshall didn't bother holding on to a full version of the game because the browser "wouldn't run past a specific date (or it was tied to an old version of Internet Explorer and wouldn't work anymore)"
Unfortunately, like with many things from that time on the internet, we will likely never be able to experience the full Pokémon 2000 Adventure Game. Odds are it wasn't all that great, but as an obscure piece of Pokémon history, would be well worth preserving.
Source: Lost Media